114Accesses
1Citation
7 Altmetric
Abstract
This article examines the significance and practical challenges of using leaked email data for academic research into the inner mechanisms of non-democratic regimes, with a focus on Russia’s hybrid warfare against Ukraine. While investigative journalism and open-source intelligence have immensely benefited from leaked email data, academia has largely distanced itself from this novel type of reference and related empirical findings. Initial scholarly endeavors utilizing leaked emails highlight two key issues: 1) the authenticity of leaked data and the specifics of its interpretation and verification; and 2) research ethics concerning the privacy of leaked email account holders. I argue that traceability and ethical dilemmas should be addressed in tandem, considering the wider public good. The findings of this article may also apply to the study of other authoritarian regimes, such as China and Iran.
This is a preview of subscription content,log in via an institution to check access.
Access this article
Subscribe and save
- Get 10 units per month
- Download Article/Chapter or eBook
- 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
- Cancel anytime
Buy Now
Price includes VAT (Japan)
Instant access to the full article PDF.


Similar content being viewed by others
Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles and news from researchers in related subjects, suggested using machine learning.References
@DFRLab. 2016. Breaking Down the Surkov Leaks.DFRLab, October 26, 2016.https://medium.com/dfrlab/breaking-down-the-surkov-leaks-b2feec1423cb.
Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany. 2019. Exposed: China’s operating manuals for mass internment and arrest by algorithm.International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, November 24, 2019.https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-cables/exposed-chinas-operating-manuals-for-mass-internment-and-arrest-by-algorithm/.
Article 29 Data Protection Working Party. 2018. Article 29 Working Party Guidelines on Consent under Regulation 2016/679.
Banday, M.T. 2011. Technology corner: analysing e-mail headers for forensic investigation.Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law 6 (2): 5.
Barros, Robert. 2005. Secrecy and Dictatorship: Some Problems in the Study of Authoritarian Regimes. Political Methodology Committee on Concepts and Methods Working Paper Series.
Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations. 2020. New York and Geneva: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights & the Human Rights Center at the University of California.https://humanrights.berkeley.edu/programs-projects/tech-human-rights-program/berkeley-protocol-digital-open-source-investigations.
Boustead, Anne E., and Trey Herr. 2020. Analyzing the Ethical Implications of Research Using Leaked Data.PS: Political Science & Politics 53 (3): 505–9.https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096520000323.
Breeden, Aurelien, Sewell Chan, and Nicole Perlroth. 2017. Macron Campaign Says It Was Target of ‘Massive’ Hacking Attack.The New York Times, May 5, 2017.https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/05/world/europe/france-macron-hacking.html.
Conger, Kate, and David E. Sanger. 2022. Hackers Claim to Target Russian Institutions in Barrage of Cyberattacks and Leaks.The New York Times, April 22, 2022, sec. U.S.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/22/us/politics/hackers-russia-cyberattacks.html.
Damp e-mail boris.ra@mail.ru, yakyi nalezhytʹ B.Rapoportu—pomichnyku Surkova-Putina [E-mail dump boris.ra@mail.ru, which belongs to B.Rapoport—Assistant of Surkov-Putin]. ordilo.org. May 26, 2020.https://ordilo.org/damp-e-mail-boris-ramail-ru-yakyi-nalezhyt-b-rapoportu-p/
Davies, L. 2016. Russia’s ‘governance’ approach: Intervention and the conflict in the donbas.Europe-Asia Studies 68 (4): 726–749.https://doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2016.1173652.
Drezner, D. 2015. The Academic Universe Is Indifferent to WikiLeaks.The Washington Post, July 30, 2015.https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/07/30/the-academic-universe-is-indifferent-to-wikileaks/?utm_term=.00277d130432.
Egelman, Serge, Joseph Bonneau, Sonia Chiasson, David Dittrich, and Stuart Schechter. 2012. It’s Not Stealing If You Need It: A Panel on the Ethics of Performing Research Using Public Data of Illicit Origin. InFinancial Cryptography and Data Security, edited by Jim Blyth, Sven Dietrich, and L. Jean Camp, 7398:124–32. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34638-5_11.
EUvsDisinfo. 2016. “#SURKOVLEAKS,” November 4, 2016.https://euvsdisinfo.eu/surkovleaks/.
Fainsod, M. 1958.Smolensk under soviet rule. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Fedor, J., and R. Fredheim. 2017. We need more clips about putin, and lots of them: Russia’s state-commissioned online visual culture.Nationalities Papers 45 (2): 161–181.https://doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2016.1266608.
Fiorella, Giancarlo. 2021. First Steps to Getting Started in Open Source Research.Bellingcat, November 9, 2021.https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/2021/11/09/first-steps-to-getting-started-in-open-source-research/.
Frankel, M.S. 2011. Turning Up the Heat on Research Integrity: Lessons From “Climategate”. InPromoting Research Integrity in a Global Environment, edited by T. Mayer and N.H. Steneck. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Company.
Frye, T. 2021.Weak strongman: The limits of power in Putin’s Russia. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gilbert, George, ed. 2020.Reading Russian sources: A student’s guide to text and visual sources from Russian history. Routledge guides to using historical sources. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Giuliano, E. 2018. Who supported separatism in Donbas? Ethnicity and popular opinion at the start of the Ukraine Crisis.Post-Soviet Affairs 34 (2–3): 158–178.https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2018.1447769.
Goode, J.P. 2010. Redefining Russia: Hybrid regimes, fieldwork, and Russian politics.Perspectives on Politics 8 (4): 1055–1075.https://doi.org/10.1017/S153759271000318X.
gordonua.com. 2017. “Eks-glava penitentsiarnoi sluzhby: Pobeg iz-pod strazhi v Ukraine stoil Shepelevu $1 mln. Eto obychnaya taksa. V Rossii ego osvobodili za $10 mln [Former head of the penitentiary service: Escape from custody in Ukraine cost Shepelev $1 million. This is a common fee. He was released in Russia for $10 million],” August 21, 2017.https://gordonua.com/news/politics/eks-glava-penitenciarnoy-sluzhby-pobeg-iz-pod-strazhi-v-ukraine-stoil-shepelevu-1-mln-eto-obychnaya-taksa-v-rossii-ego-osvobodili-za-10-mln-203470.html.
Hauter, J. 2021. Forensic conflict studies: making sense of war in the social media age.Media, War & Conflict.https://doi.org/10.1177/17506352211037325.
Hauter, Jakob. 2023.Russia’s Overlooked Invasion: The Causes of the 2014 Outbreak of War in Ukraine’s Donbas. Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, vol. 270. Stuttgart: ibidem Verlag.
Hosaka, S. 2018. The Kremlin’s active measures failed in 2013 that’s when russia remembered its last resort—Crimea.Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization 26 (3): 321–64.
Hosaka, S. 2019a. Putin the ‘peacemaker’?—Russian reflexive control during the 2014 August invasion of Ukraine.The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 32 (3): 324–346.https://doi.org/10.1080/13518046.2019.1646950.
Hosaka, S. 2019b. Welcome to Surkov’s theater: Russian political technology in the Donbas war.Nationalities Papers 47 (5): 750–773.https://doi.org/10.1017/nps.2019.70.
Hosaka, S. 2024. Explaining support for Russian narratives about the events in Ukraine among Japanese scholars and intellectuals in 2014–19.Communist and Post-Communist Studies.https://doi.org/10.1525/cpcs.2024.2313826.
How Do You Cite Email Communications from Individuals? 2009. American Psychological Association. May 2009.https://apastyle.apa.org/learn/faqs/cite-individual-email.
Hulcoop, Adam, John Scott-Railton, Peter Tanchak, Matt Brooks, and Ron Deibert. 2017. Tainted Leaks: Disinformation and Phishing with a Russian Nexus.
Ireton, J.O. 2015. The admissibility of evidence in ICSID arbitration: considering the validity of wikileaks cables as evidence.ICSID Review 30 (1): 231–242.https://doi.org/10.1093/icsidreview/siu029.
Jaillant, L. 2019. After the digital revolution: Working with emails and born-digital records in literary and publishers’ archives.Archives and Manuscripts 47 (3): 285–304.https://doi.org/10.1080/01576895.2019.1640555.
Johnson, Loch K. 2007. Introduction. InHandbook of Intelligence Studies, edited by Loch K. Johnson. London: Routledge.
Joint Investigation Team. 2019. “MH17 Witness Appeal November 2019.” Joint Investigation Team. 2019.https://www.politie.nl/en/themes/flight-mh17/witness-appeal-crash-mh17.html.
Katchanovski, I. 2016. The separatist war in Donbas: a violent break-up of Ukraine?†.European Politics and Society 17 (4): 473–489.https://doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2016.1154131.
Kayser-Bril, Nicolas. 2018. “Measuring the Unmeasured with Data.” InDigital Investigative Journalism, edited by Oliver Hahn and Florian Stalph, 31–41. Cham: Springer International Publishing.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97283-1_4.
King, G., R.O. Keohane, and S. Verba. 1994.Designing social inquiry: scientific inference in qualitative research. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
Krutov, Mark. 2016. Tainy serogo kardinala [Secrets of the Gray Cardinal].Radio Svoboda, October 26, 2016.https://www.svoboda.org/a/28076558.html.
Lauristin, Marju. 2018. The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). November 7.
Levitsky, S., and L.A. Way. 2010.Competitive authoritarianism: hybrid regimes after the cold war. Cambridge University Press.
Libman, A. 2023. Credibility revolution and the future of russian studies.Post-Soviet Affairs 39 (1–2): 60–69.https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2022.2148446.
Matsuzato, K. 2017. The Donbass war: outbreak and deadlock.Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization 25 (2): 175–201.
Matveeva, A. 2016. No Moscow Stooges: Identity polarization and guerrilla movements in Donbass.Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 16 (1): 25–50.
McKenzie, R. 2018. “#GuptaLeaks: How Sahara Handed SA Jobs to Foreigners.” Gupta-Leaks.Com. September 20, 2018.https://www.gupta-leaks.com/information/guptaleaks-how-sahara-handed-sa-jobs-to-foreigners/.
Myrotvorets. 2021. “Ahent ‘Kazbek’ ta ioho zlochyny proty Ukrainy (ch.1),” January 3, 2021.https://myrotvorets.center/1814066-agent-kazbek-ta-jogo-zlochini-proti/#more-1814066.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence. 2017. Background to ‘Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections’: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution. Office of the Director of National Intelligence.https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf.
Ortiz, Ricardo Calvillo. 2018. “Admissibility of Hacked Emails as Evidence in Arbitration.”Center for Transnational Litigation, Arbitration, and Commercial Law, May 14, 2018.https://blogs.law.nyu.edu/transnational/2018/05/admissibility-of-hacked-emails-as-evidence-in-arbitration/.
Perepiska Surkova: Putin poruchil stroit’ Kerchenskii most eshche do anneksii Kryma [Correspondence of Surkov: Putin instructed to build the Kerch bridge even before the annexation of Crimea].” 2016.Obozrevatel.https://incident.obozrevatel.com/crime/15346-perepiska-surkova-putin-poruchil-stroit-kerchenskij-most-esche-do-anneksii-kryima.htm.
Ping.Eu. n.d. Ping.Eu. Accessed November 28, 2017.https://ping.eu/ns-whois/.
Popper, Karl. 1998. Science: Conjectures and Refutations. InIntroductory Readings in the Philosophy of Science, edited by E. D. Klemke, Robert Hollinger, David Wÿss Rudge, and A. David Kline, 3rd. ed. Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus Books
Rons, Ian. 2022. A Load of Ballistics.The Daily Sceptic, July 17, 2022.https://dailysceptic.org/2022/07/17/a-load-of-ballistics/.
Roonemaa, Holger. 2024. Kremlin Leaks: Secret Files Reveal How Putin Pre-Rigged His Reelection.VSquare.Org, February 26, 2024.https://vsquare.org/kremlin-leaks-putin-elections-russia-propaganda-ukraine/.
Schneider, J., C. Adams, S. DeBauche, R. Echols, C. McKean, J. Moran, and D. Waugh. 2019. Appraising, processing, and providing access to email in contemporary literary archives.Archives and Manuscripts 47 (3): 305–326.https://doi.org/10.1080/01576895.2019.1622138.
Schultheis, Emily. 2017. The Macron Leaks Probably Came Too Late to Change the French Election.The Atlantic, May 6, 2017.https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/france-macron-leak-hack/525738/.
Shandra, Alya, and Robert Seely. 2019. The Surkov Leaks: The Inner Workings of Russia’s Hybrid War in Ukraine. Occasional Paper. London: The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies.https://rusi.org/sites/default/files/201907_op_surkov_leaks_web_final.pdf.
Shandra, Alya. 2016. Ukrainian Leak of Data of Journalists Accredited in Separatist ‘DNR,’ Explained.Euromaidanpress, May 12, 2016.http://euromaidanpress.com/2016/05/12/ukrainian-leak-of-data-of-journalists-accredited-in-separatist-dnr-explained/.
Smyth, R. 2023. Plus Ça Change : Getting real about the evolution of Russian studies after 1991.Post-Soviet Affairs 39 (1–2): 10–26.https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2022.2161232.
Studennikova, Galina. 2016. Pis’ma Surkova’ [Surkov’s Letters].UkrRudProm, October 28, 2016.http://ukrrudprom.com/digest/Pisma_Surkova_Vstrechi_s_ukrainskimi_oligarhami_garantii_Klichko.html.
Task Force on Technical Approaches for Email Archives. 2018. The Future of Email Archives: A Report from the Task Force on Technical Approaches for Email Archives.Council on Library and Information Resources.https://www.clir.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2018/08/CLIR-pub175.pdf.
Tsygankov, A. 2015. Vladimir Putin’s last stand: The sources of Russia’s Ukraine policy.Post-Soviet Affairs 31 (4): 279–303.https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2015.1005903.
Vinh-Doyle, W.P. 2017. Appraising Email (Using Digital Forensics): Techniques and challenges.Archives and Manuscripts 45 (1): 18–30.https://doi.org/10.1080/01576895.2016.1270838.
Walton, Calder. 2023. Spies: The Epic Intelligence War between East and West. First Simon&Schuster hardcover edition. New York: Simon and Schuster
Weiss, Michael, and Holger Roonemaa. 2023. “Exclusive: Putin’s Plans to Keep the Baltics in Check.”Yahoo News, April 25, 2023.https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-putins-plans-to-keep-the-baltics-in-check-220033457.html.
WikiIran. n.d. Accessed June 2, 2024.https://www.wikiran.org/leaks/sahara-thunder.
Wilson, A. 2005.Virtual politics: Faking democracy in the post-soviet world. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Zolotukhin, Dmytro. 2020. Vzlom Borisa Rapoporta. Chast’ 1: Ch’i ushi torchat? [Hacking Boris Rapoport. Part 1: Whose ears stick out?].detector.media, June 11, 2020.https://detector.media/infospace/article/177879/2020-06-11-vzlom-borysa-rapoporta-chast-1-chy-ushy-torchat/.
Zoria, Yuri. 2019. Mail Hack Suggests Russian Funding of Zelenskyi Campaign, NGO States.Euromaidanpress, April 9, 2019.http://euromaidanpress.com/2019/04/09/mail-hack-suggests-russian-funding-of-zelenskyi-campaign-ngo-states/.
Acknowledgements
The concept for this article was developed during the course “Research Integrity: Framework Requirements, Values, and Principles of Action” at the University of Tartu. I would like to express my gratitude to Halliki Harro-Loit for her constructive comments on the initial paper, and to the peer reviewers for their valuable feedback on this article.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
The International Centre for Defence and Security, Tallinn, Estonia
Sanshiro Hosaka
University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia
Sanshiro Hosaka
- Sanshiro Hosaka
Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar
Corresponding author
Correspondence toSanshiro Hosaka.
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
There is no conflict of interest.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Hosaka, S. Leaked email data: a new source for the study of authoritarian regimes.Digi War6, 1 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1057/s42984-024-00097-w
Share this article
Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:
Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.
Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative